I did a bit of google foo, and apparently 8 states have laws on the books that prohibit letting your dog ride unrestrained in the bed of your pick-up, but I couldn’t find anywhere that prohibits your dog from riding unrestrained inside your car or truck. The laws for restraint in the bed of pick-ups is primarily for the safety of the animals.
On three different occasions over the last 2 months, I have witnessed near miss accidents because a woman driving with her small dog in her lap became distracted with poochie interfering with her driving. This is almost as bad as texting while driving.
Seriously, is your damn dog that important that they must sit in your lap with their head out the driver’s side window as you tool around town?
I said no because of the wording. The dog can sit quietly on the seat next to the driver. Mine typically sleeps most of the trip. He’s no distraction at all.
I agree the dog does not need to be in the drivers lap. That is very dangerous.
Dogs don’t need to be restrained, although it can be a good idea. They just should stay out of the driver’s lap. But we don’t need another dumb law about it.
My dog sits quietly on the backseat and often just falls asleep. We don’t restrain him normally, though when we drove with him from New York to Michigan he did wear his doggy harness.
**Obviously **a dog (or cat, child, whatever) should not be sitting in the lap of the driver while the vehicle is in motion. Anyone who would drive like that is a moron plain and simple. Laws would not change that.
Our 3 boys are unrestrained when we drive, and the only person it sucks for is the passenger. Two sit in the back, and the third (he’s the bully of the house) sits in the passenger seat, whether or not there’s a passenger.
Agreed that they should not interfere with the driver. At all.
One of ours, when he’s being super cute, will sit on the console in the middle and just watch. He has rested his chin on the driver’s shoulder (this was a long drive on the interstate) and it was very sweet. We didn’t consider it interfering or distracting (other than the squee-ness of it).
No. We don’t need more petty laws. I would be in favor of a blanket law that says if your dog, or your sandwich eating or whatever causes such a distraction that you cause an accident, there would be additional penalties than if you simply made an error in judgement.
My dog sits nicely in the backseat. Never tries to get in the front. Never interferes with me. He’s better trained than that.
In many states ‘distracted driving’ isn’t limited to cell phone use or text messaging. If an officer thinks something is preventing you from operating a vehicle in a safe manner they can ticket you for it.
Trying to eat noddle soup with chopsticks, dog jumping in your lap, you texting your buddy, all examples of distracted driving. I see no reason to make a specific law against dogs when there are laws available to curb the behavior that’s problematic. If the police of your state come back and say we have no means of stopping this behavior then you can look into legislation but the police already have a number of laws to work with even if it takes some creativity.
There are already laws against distracted driving. It’s stupid to invent more when it’s not necessary. Unrestrained dogs aren’t the problem in this post. The stupid owners are the problem. And if they weren’t being distracted by their lap poodle, then they’d be texting and driving, or putting on makeup and driving, or preparing an elaborate souffle and driving. But we don’t need laws against texting and driving, making up and driving, or souffleing and driving. We just need one law against driving while distracted.
I see Boytype mostly ninjaed me, along with several others. It’s just an unnecessary proposal.
Seems there are plenty of laws that cover this without having to add a shittily worded law to the books that restricts plenty of other drivers doing nothing at all.
Our dogs are trained to ride on the floor of the front seat. If there is an accident, they aren’t going anywhere and they are down out of the way of the killer air bags.
When we have a second dog along, he is harnessed and belted down in the back seat.
I voted no, we already have a good supply of nanny laws.
I don’t need a law to stop me wanting 30kgs of dog turning into a 300kg missile should I be unfortunate enough to be in an accident.
In Australia, you can be fined for having an unrestrained dog in your car; and in most states it’s illegal to have them riding untethered in the back of a flat bed truck or a ute.
Your insurance company will not pay if there is an unharnessed animal in your vehicle, even if technically, you are not at fault.
In the back seat with a dog safety harness. The dog is restrained by the vehicle’s seat belts. You can also attach a leash to the harness so that you can walk the dog outside of the car.
Thing is, I need citations that this is actually a problem. Have unrestrained dogs caused these problems you give? It’s possible, but I haven’t heard of it.
If so, then sure. If not, then no, since the situation in the OP is already covered without having to get specific.
I have one small dog who occasionally rides in the car but I’ve always made him stay in the back seat. He does get a little overexcited when we stop at lights but as soon as we’re moving again he’s still and a little shaky legged.
This is why I always transport critters in carriers (carriers are seat belted in as well) or a seatbelt harness. Humans must wear seat belts. In case of an accident, I don’t want to be hit by flying passengers.
Here in rational Arizona, animals must be restrained if riding in the back of trucks, but humans over 18 can sit in the back of the pick up, and if they are over 21, they can have their ice chest full of malty beverages between them so they don’t suffer much from the wind.
Until a friend mentioned the whole projectile thing, I never really thought about the issue much. But at the moment, both my dogs do have ‘the run of the car’ provided they stay out of my area.
About 20 years ago my aunt was driving when one of her dogs jumped across her lap for a dog toy she had between the door and the driver’s seat. When the dog did that he hit her arm and she swerved into a parked truck, totaling her car. Since then, I do actively try to stay away from people that I see with dogs on their laps or dogs hanging out of driver side windows. I know it’s a slightly different situation since this dog was attempting to jump over her or under her arms or something like that, and she was probably trying to swat him away and was, I assume, generally surprised by the whole situation, but still…you got a dog, you got your arms and hands on the wheel, it’s not going to take much for the dog to make you swerve and if I’m next to you, we’re really only, what, 5 or 6 feet apart…yeah, I’ll just fall back a little, just enough to give you the clearance you need if you swerve into my lane.
